


cut your teeth on gristle and home

by ManukaHoney



Category: SEAL Team (TV)
Genre: Brotherhood, Clay Spenser gets a hug, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Protective Jason Hayes, Team as Family, Trauma, let's be real clay saw some shit growing up
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:54:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27778711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ManukaHoney/pseuds/ManukaHoney
Summary: Clay could probably tread water for hours and make it look easy-Jason’s convinced of it.Knowing what he knows about the kid now, though, he wants to kick himself for not noticing. He should have noticed back when Clay first got out of BUDs, because that’s his job as Bravo One; to see what’s going on under the surface.
Relationships: Bravo Team & Clay Spenser, Jason Hayes & Clay Spenser, Ray Perry & Clay Spenser, Sonny Quinn & Clay Spenser
Comments: 34
Kudos: 159





	cut your teeth on gristle and home

**Author's Note:**

> I hope your life is filled with love.   
> If you enjoy this first chapter at all, please feel free to come talk/leave a comment, it'd bring me a lot of joy.
> 
> "Thank God time keeps erasing everything in this steady, impeccable way. Now it's like I never lived that live-never had to." -Carrie Fountain, 'Experience."

Clay had always been more comfortable in the water than anyone else could match.

They once saw the kid crawl along the bottom of a thirty metre training pool with fatigues on, looking more calm and controlled than he ever had on land.

Not even Jason could tear his eyes away from the sight, even though he’d cover it up later; say that _he was just making sure the Rookie didn’t drown himself in the deep end,_ or that keeping an eye on his team was _just part of being a leader._

They’d all been transfixed. Kid didn’t even have  _ fins  _ on.

Sonny, more honest by nature and less instinctively opposed to the kid than Jason had been, just whistled at the sight in front of them and said  _ “Rookie looks like a damn crocodile down there,”  _ because he did.

Jason had heard a rumour that when Clay went through his final water-treading exercise in BUDs, out in open water, with a weight belt strapped to his body, the staff had to tell him to  _ shut the fuck up  _ more than once. Apparently the kid had gotten bored and started talking about football to the guys around him by the halfway mark, and in the last minute, when everyone else was  _ really _ digging deep to get through the exercise and pass, their boy had still been talking. Not even a wince, or a determined breath, or any other sign of struggle. He’d just looked like he was  _ standing  _ there.

Clay could probably tread water for hours and make it look easy-Jason’s convinced of it.

Knowing what he knows about the kid now, though, he wants to kick himself for not  _ noticing.  _ He should have noticed back when Clay first got out of BUDs, because that’s his job as Bravo One; to see what’s going on under the surface.

The first lesson that Clay taught him is that when things seem too smooth on the surface, it’s usually because there are fins working like hell in the water below them.

They find out that Clay grew up in Liberia when Jason takes a single look at the mismatched pile of clothes and equipment and combat boots in the kid's cage and immediately puts his foot in his mouth.

Later, when he told Alana about it, Jason would insist that it was Sonny’s fault for calling attention to it first, because Sonny had walked over to talk to Clay, looked momentarily stunned and then whistled low as he said that _ Clay’s cage made his own look ready for a fuckin’ inspection, comparatively speaking. _

When Jason went over to see what he was talking about, he’d taken in the sight and immediately asked the kid,  _ “Were you raised in an African slum, Bravo Six?” _

Clay’s mouth had dropped open for a second before he asked Jason  _ how he’d known that,  _ and Jason thought he was taking the piss for a beat until realising he was serious. Sonny had laughed so hard that the beer he was sipping came out his nose, and it was only when Clay himself had laughed and taken it in his stride that the rest of Bravo joined in.

The kid was good at that-taking shit in his stride and laughing along with it. 

It was only after that first crack in their view of Clay’s childhood emerged that the rest of it seemed to follow suite.

Clay was taken into foster care as a kid, and he wound up in Liberia because his grandparents there were the only relatives willing to take him.

Sonny tells him about that time they watched him crocodile-crawl across the floor of the pool and asks how the hell he learned to stay underwater for that long, and Clay shrugs while he tells them that he used to spearfish in Monrovia back in primary school because  _ “if you didn’t dive, you didn’t get dinner.” _

Ray asks him what his grandparents were even  _ doing  _ in a country like Liberia in the nineties, except it’s Ray, so it comes across a lot more subtle than that, something more like,  _ “So were your grandparents missionaries, or something?” _

Clay had refused to tell them what his grandparents did, just that they weren’t missionaries, but when he’s drunk and half-leaning on Sonny in a bar one night, he tells them about being kidnapped by a drug dealer and held for ransom for three days and shows them the slight scar on the top of his left wrist from being handcuffed to a fridge door. 

He laughs when he tells them about it, and that’s the part that makes Jason feel like he’s completely fucked up as a leader by not knowing about that in the same way he knows about Sonny’s mom or Ray’s financial worries. He’s too drunk to catch the slightly-horrified glances the rest of Bravo is shooting each other.

Clay’s fearlessness looked a lot less like arrogance after that, and a lot more like someone who saw so much, so young, that pulling dangerous stunts just felt like normal life.

Within a few months of being part of Bravo team, Clay’s everyone’s little brother, and Jason’s sure he’d swing at anyone for the kid if it came down to it.

  
  


……………..

  
  


He doesn’t miss the looks people give him when they hear he grew up in Liberia. There’s always this startled, surprised look that they try to cover up, feigning interest and trying to find a roundabout way of asking  _ why. _

The first time it comes up around his brothers, they’re too surprised and too busy laughing at Jason’s tactless way of bringing it to light to ask too many questions in the moment.

The second time, they’re in a joint briefing with Delta team about the sociopolitical tensions in Liberia, and the inevitability of SEAL involvement if civil war broke out in the region again. 

He can feel the members of Bravo team occasionally flickering glances toward him, and he tries to shove down his irritation, because  _ what are they expecting him to do, stand up and give an impromptu political analysis?  _

Mandy’s mentioned the growing rates of violent crime and terrorism several times, and they’re twelve minutes into the briefing.

“The region’s experienced instability since the seventies,” she said, as if she’s  _ ever  _ been there, “But the significant poverty in Liberia means that these militias are recruiting youth who are underprivileged and vulnerable to exploitation because of it.”

He remembers Titus, who was so skinny you could see the outline of his ribcage when he hadn’t made enough money over the summer, and how he’d probably throw a punch at anyone who called him  _ vulnerable. _

He wants to say that she’s not giving them enough credit, but he bites down on his words.

It almost works.

But then this guy from Delta team pipes up from across the conference table and says,  _ “Half the kids in those shithole slums we have to play peacekeeper in would sell us to a militia for a dollar bill if they could,”  _ and he has to clench his fists real tight to try and bundle up that anger before he decks the guy.

There are  _ a lot  _ of things he wants to say, and if the CO of Delta hadn’t snapped at him to  _ shut the fuck up,  _ he might have said all of them.

Jason finds him a couple of hours later, after everyone else has gone home, and he’s sitting against a wall in his cage with a photo held delicately in his hands like some homesick recruit on his first overseas deployment. 

Jason sits down next to him, leaning back against the wall, and he tries to subtly move the photo so that his team leader can’t see it.

“Sneaky,” Jason quips, and Clay can’t help but huff a moment of laughter.

There’s a beat of silence, and he’s pretty sure Jason’s waiting him out, trying to get him to start talking about something, so he doesn’t. In the end, Jason breaks the silence.

“You know, the mountains in Pakistan are worth every moment of the deployment. They’re incredible, probably make a great tourist place one day when people stop blowing up pressure cookers there.”

And whatever he thought Jason was going to say,  _ that  _ wasn’t it.

Jason said it with such a straight face and for a minute, he can’t stop laughing, especially when Jason cracka an uncharacteristic smile back at him.

“Yeah,” he says, because he’s seen the mountains in Pakistan and they’re pretty damn breathtaking. “Maybe wait til the landmines are gone, too. Then it’ll be a tourist trap.”

They’re kidding, but they're also not.

He licks his lips and acts before he can talk himself out of it, unfurling the photograph in his hand and cautiously passing it over to Jason.

To his credit, Jason seems to get that this is important to him, and holds the photo like it’s something worth handling carefully, and he tries to shove down the knot that forms in his stomach at that act alone.

Jason looks at the photo, and he looks at Jason’s face, trying to capture what his team leader’s thinking and trying just as hard not to care.

It’s faded, but the colours are still there. In the photo, two boys are standing in the middle of a street so packed with people that it’s almost hard to distinguish them as the focal point. Both the boys are shirtless, and shoeless; each wearing a pair of shorts and nothing else, even though the ground is covered in dirt and cigarette butts. 

They look eight, maybe nine years old at the most, and their arms are slung around each others’ shoulders, while their hands are occupied by newly-gutted fish and machetes.

They’re grinning, skinny and dirty but looking so proud of their catches.

“Concrete road was fuckin’ hot, cause our shoes got stolen if we wore ‘em to the beach,” he said, before even realising he’d opened his mouth. 

Jason paused, eyes turning toward him and he looked back down at the photo, trying to pretend he wasn’t embarrassed but what he’d just said.

“You look pretty proud of yourselves,” he commented, softly.

He can’t meet Jason’s eye, but the relief at the easy response hits him in the chest for a second.

“You know, none of us had anything, so we didn’t think we were poor as shit, like, we had what everyone else had, so we just thought we were middle class or some shit” he said. 

He was already running his mouth now, ineloquent and maybe not making sense, but Jason just nodded like he was explaining something perfectly, so he charged on.

“If you didn’t dive for fish or something, you didn’t eat, but that’s not the part I remember most. We laughed so much, and we fished together and got ciguatera poisoning together and ran around the streets playing  _ Hide and Seek  _ while the civil war was going on.”

He remembers seeing men gutted in the street, and at the time, he didn’t know much else other than the world in front of his own eyes, and it’s only in hindsight he knows that wasn’t a normal thing to see.

He tells Jason as much, and the man actually looks at him all  _ soft  _ and it’s weird until he remembers that Jason has kids, and probably couldn’t imagine them running around the slums of Monrovia barefoot, machete in hand and too excited about dinner to care about the guy whose guts are on the pavement next to his body.

“It wasn’t a slum, I mean,” he finishes, trying to get an actual point across somehow, “It was just home. And fishing. And freedom. It wasn’t a shit-hole slum like they want it to sound like.”

That was the first time Jason hugged him like he hugged Ray and all their other brothers on Bravo team; arm slung over his shoulder just like Titus’ arm had been pulling him in for that photo. 

He hugged back, determined not to fuck his opportunity with this team up.

  
  



End file.
